


A Million Shards of Glass

by TwilightKnight17



Series: Hours 'Verse [4]
Category: Persona 3, Persona Series
Genre: Brief Mention of Suicide, Can be read on its own, Death, Gen, M/M, Nightmares, loose timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 19:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11363763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwilightKnight17/pseuds/TwilightKnight17
Summary: Achieving the ideal ending means leaving millions of lesser possibilities unfulfilled.And those possibilities can be haunting.





	A Million Shards of Glass

**Author's Note:**

> [This is not bound strictly to the timeline, hence no mention of the date anywhere. It is simply a thing that happened at some point, and is likely still happening. I wrote the Golden Ending, let me get the sads out of my system before I go back to working on Catch Perfect.]

They both had nightmares of what might have been.

From slightly different perspectives, granted, but nightmares all the same.

When you escaped the end of the world by a bare margin, it was easy to imagine everything that could have gone wrong. Dreams of S.E.E.S. being killed by shadows as the massive eye loomed overhead were common at first. They’d both dreamed of Messiah refusing to come, the fusion failing, and dying in agony atop Tartarus. They’d dreamed of the Seal taking all that they were, confining them to living death at the ends of the world. They’d dreamed it _at the same time_ , once, and had woken up shivering and wrapped around each other, unable to let go.

Neither had slept after that, that night.

Ryoji had dreams of the abstract, of the Fall coming to consume everyone he loved. He’d dreamed of himself, helpless as the Avatar atop Tartarus, killing S.E.E.S. one by one until only his soulmate was left standing. And then killing him, too. He’d dreamed of Minato putting his evoker to his temple on New Year’s Eve, except it was a real gun, and his Wild Card chose to end himself rather than face ending Ryoji.

He’d dreamed of Minato dying in his arms on the roof, giving all of himself to the Seal so that Ryoji could live.

Minato’s dreams were equally bleak. The Avatar disappearing into Nyx, refusing to release Ryoji even though he screamed his voice raw. His room, splattered in blood after one of his personas had torn the boy he loved apart. Those dreams had lasted until he’d realized with horror that he hadn’t been the Universe then. He would have had to do it himself, unable to summon personas outside of the Dark Hour. His dreams shifted after that to include bloody swords and slashed throats, and in his mind Ryoji never stopped smiling, even though he was crying too.

He had hazy memories of karaoke, and couldn’t go anywhere near it for months without feeling nauseous.

And the dream they’d both had, but never talked about, the dream where they’d wedged the sword into whatever furniture they could manage, and fallen on it together, sealing the world’s fate with a bloody kiss.

Tonight, apparently, it was Ryoji’s turn. He couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out. He felt trapped in his own body, but it wasn’t his anymore, was it? It was grotesque, awful, the form of Death, the body of the thirteenth Arcana Shadow. And he could feel himself speak, hear himself, coaxing.

_“Come to me.”_

The fog around him thinned, and he could make out a figure, walking slowly, feet dragging the ground. The figure had its hands in its pockets, and he would have shuddered if he could move.

**_No no no, no, stop, no!_ **

But the boy did not stop, and he felt his hand extending no matter how he tried to pull back.

_“Come to me, and sleep.”_

He knew how much his other half liked to sleep.

He wanted to scream, to cry, to beg his dearest to stay back. To beg him to kill him before he could hurt him. To tell him to never come near him, to never have to face his own mortality. But Minato kept walking, reaching for his hand, and Ryoji woke with a yell, his face damp with tears. He laid there for a moment, shaking, trying desperately to stop crying, and jumped when a hand touched his face gently.

Minato shushed him, dabbing at his tears with the cuff of his pajamas, and then wrapped his arms around him. “It’s okay. You’re here. We’re here. It’s okay.”

They were too used to this scenario. And the reverse.

Ryoji resisted a sudden mad impulse to get Minato as far from himself as possible, and instead clung to him tightly, burying his face in his shoulder. “I have too many feelings. This shouldn’t keep happening.”

“You’re human now. Of course you have too many feelings.” Minato’s fingers were gentle in his hair in contrast to the blunt words. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“You wouldn’t stay away from me, even though I was going to kill you.”

Minato hummed. “That one, huh… It’s true, though, wasn’t it? I couldn’t stay away from you.”

Ryoji choked on a giggle, squeezing his eyes shut against a fresh wave of tears. “You really couldn’t…”

They laid there for a long time, quietly, until Ryoji had stopped sniffling and Minato finally said, “Hamuko has these dreams too. She dreams about Shinjiro-senpai dying, and being trapped in the Seal, and watching you disappear out of reach. She told me about them once; she seemed relieved she wasn’t the only one.”

Taking a deep breath, Ryoji finally seemed to relax again, though he didn’t let go of Minato. “They have to stop eventually, right?”

“Probably. It’s not like we could talk to a therapist or something.” Minato sighed, pulling the covers over Ryoji’s head. “Go back to sleep. We promised to walk Koromaru in the morning so Ken can finish his homework. I’m not going anywhere, and I’m definitely not dying. If literally the Goddess of Death wasn’t enough to kill me, nothing will.”

Ryoji clawed his way back out from under the blankets, catching Minato with a kiss on his cheek before settling again. “All right, all right. Just...don’t leave, okay? Sometimes...I get scared when I wake up alone.”

“Idiot,” Minato murmured, but the name had nothing but affection, and just before Ryoji drifted back to sleep he heard, faintly, “I’m the same way…”

Stopping the apocalypse certainly hadn’t made life perfect, but so long as they had each other to lean on, things were definitely going to turn out fine in the end.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I know in the game it's implied he uses the evoker and calls something to kill Ryoji, but I've sort of already established that they can't summon personas in normal space (except Minato, now). So... Yeah. X'D Cut me some slack on that one, please?


End file.
